Apache DeviceMap

Werner Keil

@wernerkeil | wkeil@apache.org

Agenda

• Introduction

• History and Comparison

• Project Brief

• Tests and Results

• Examples and Demo

• Outlook

• Conclusion

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Who am I?

• Consultant – Coach

• Creative Cosmopolitan

• Open Source Evangelist

• Software Architect

• JCP EC Member

• DevOps Guy …

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Twitter @wernerkeil

Email wkeil@apache.org

INTRODUCTION

What is a DDR?

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What is a DDR?

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What is a DDR?

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What is a DDR?

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What is DeviceMap?

Day after day we all experience an incredible growth and

fragmentation of devices available on a more and more

proliferated market.

Accurately tracking their specs has become very hard

work.

But this complexity can be reduced if managed by a

community daily involved in improving the Device

Description Repository (DDR).

This is the essence of the DeviceMap project, the best

open and free repository of device descriptions currently

available.

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Why is DeviceMap different?

If you want a comfortable user experience, you need

dynamic, “responsive” content according to hardware and

browser of your device.

Device Description Repositories (DDR) are databases that

plenty of information concerning mobile phones, tablets,

Interactive TVs, set top boxes and any device having a

Web browser. DDR allow developers to realize applications

providing appropriate user experience on each client

There are several DDR projects, most demand often hefty

fees to access to their databases and APIs or restricts free

use to non-commercial applications.

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HISTORY

WURFL Wall

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WURFL Wall since August 2011

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WURFL no longer Open Source

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Project Comparison

Project Strength Weakness License

MaDDR Project The interface is a

W3C standard

Device repository only with

commercial mobileAware DDR (the

APIs are bundled with a small

sample DDR)

The maDDR project cannot offer an

adaptation technology that uses

repository knowledge to guide its

processes.

Repository:

Commercial license

only

API: Commercial

license OR Simple

DDR API

implementation

licensed as LGPL.

DeviceAtlas Data is multi-

sourced from

industry-leading

partners.

Some W3C

compliance

Only commercial licenses. Repository:

Commercial license

API: Commercial

license

Volantis Relatively wide

device coverage

Only commercial licenses.

Multiple takeovers, the new owner

does not show support for it any

more.

Repository:

Commercial license

API: Commercial

license

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Project Comparison (2)

Project Strength Weakness License

WURFL Former

Community project

(till Aug 2011)

The license does not allow to use

the DDR without accessing through

the WURFL API

the API does not allow use in

projects with a proprietary license

Repository: Use not

allowed if accessed

without WURFL APIs

API license: dual

licensing AGPL and

commercial

(Changed since

August 2011)

51Degrees.mobi More Predictable

product catalogue,

.NET Support

Free license contains fewer

devices, usually less accurate

Repository: MPL or

Commercial

(„Pro Edition“)

API: Mozilla Public

License

NetBiscuits Service based,

seems easy to

integrate at least

via JavaScript

Free and SME offerings dependent

on using their JavaScript , no API

below Enterprise or “OEM” price

range

Repository: N/A

API: Commercial

license

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PROJECT BRIEF

What was Contributed?

• In late 2011 a few months after OpenDDR started,

Apache committers and members got aware of the

technology and its relevance, too. Deciding to create

both a unified Device Repository and APIs

for common languages including Java.

• OpenDDR is a Founding Member of the DeviceMap

Incubator. And made initial contribution of W3C DDR

Libraries for Java and other languages as well as

resource data.

• Also see the Proposal Wiki:

http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/DeviceMapProposal

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Metro – DeviceMap for .NET

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Why Open Standards?

• DeviceMap stakes on open standards:

• Repository is fully compliant with W3C DDR

• SimpleDDR library implements the W3C DDR Simple APIs

• From a developer point of view:

• You can start developing your application with confidence that

your product will work with any W3C DDR Simple API

implementation, no binding to DeviceMap DDR implementation

• Adopting a W3C standard, the Copyright of these interfaces is

owned and protected by W3C against any IP or patent claim

• The Apache License means that you are free to use all

of DeviceMap in open source or proprietary software.

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What's different in DeviceMap?

• Users can update the operating systems of their devices

either with custom builds, or just install a new browser.

• E.g. Google‘s Project Ara aims for modular devices with

an almost endless combination of capabilities.

• The identification of a device through the original User

Agent exposed by manufactures is no longer sufficient.

• DeviceMap considers the device as a combination of

three important aspects:

Physical Device

Operating System

Web Browser

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Level of Confidence

• DeviceMap can identify custom builds of the operating

system and third party browsers.

• If a particular version of a browser or an operating

system is not recognized, DeviceMap returns information

about the closest version rather than not returning any

information at all.

• DeviceMap identifies a device, a web browser or an

operating system with a certain level of Confidence.

• You can specify the threshold as a target to achieve in

the identification process. The higher the confidence the

slower or more memory consuming the process may be.

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Patching and Optimization

• Lowering the confidence speeds up

the process, even if you can have less accurate results.

• DeviceMap supports Patching the data source.

• In DeviceMap we can specify a reduced vocabulary in order to

limit the memory load.

• It can be specified in the oddr.limited.vocabulary.path property of

the DeviceMap properties file.

• It allows developers to choose which properties need to be

loaded in memory at startup from the datasource. In most case

developers need only a subset of properties from the datasource.

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TESTS

How we tested?

• We compared DeviceMap with WURFL API (1.3.1) in

terms of memory load in two situations:

Without limited vocabulary

With limited vocabulary

• We used jMeter as workload generator, configuring it in

order to generate 100 requests per seconds from 10

workers with a different user agent. The user agents set

contained ten of most common user agent observed in a

real environment.

• Both DeviceMap DDR and WURFL API were tested in a

simple web app.

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WURFL Memory Load

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Unreduced DeviceMap Memory Load

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Reduced DeviceMap Memory Load

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Test Results

• We chose as limited vocabulary the W3C core

vocabulary

• The memory load of Apache DeviceMap with limited

vocabulary is only about

50MB and after initialization, DeviceMap won't show a

memory spike.

• Both APIs identified correctly all the user agents in the

HTTP request

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SAMPLES

DDR Configuration

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DeviceMap DDR implements W3C Simple DDR interfaces. It supports the

core vocabulary as specified by the DDR W3C recommendation.

To use DeviceMap Simple DDR you need to configure a property file as follows: oddr.ua.device.builder.path=PATH/BuidlerDataSource.xml

oddr.ua.device.datasource.path=PATH/DeviceDataSource.xml

oddr.ua.device.builder.patch.paths=PATH/BuilderDataSourcePatch.xml

oddr.ua.device.datasource.patch.paths=PATH/DeviceDataSourcePatch.xml

oddr.ua.browser.datasource.path=PATH/BrowserDataSource.xml

ddr.vocabulary.core.path=PATH/coreVocabulary.xml

oddr.vocabulary.path=PATH/oddrVocabulary.xml

oddr.limited.vocabulary.path=PATH/oddrLimitedVocabulary.xml

oddr.vocabulary.device=http://www.openddr.org/oddr-vocabulary

oddr.threshold=70

The oddr.threshold property allows the developer to specify the desired

confidence to achieve the identification.

In this case we want a confidence of at least 70%.

DDR Service Retrieval

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To create the identification service we use the ServiceFactory

of W3C DDR-Simple-API

initializationProperties.load(context.getResourceAsStream

("/WEB-INF/oddr.properties"));

Service identificationService =

ServiceFactory.newService("org.apache.devicemap.ddrsimple.ODDRService",

ODDR_VOCABULARY_IRI,

initializationProperties);

The first argument is the class implementing the DDRService;

the second argument is the default vocabulary used in the

identification if the vocabulary is not specified; the third argument is the SimpleDDR properties file.

New Java Client

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While departing from W3C compliance a new Java client offers

a bit more flexibility e.g. when it comes to ways of loading

device data.

Data can be loaded via:

• URL

• JAR file

• File system

Get client using data from a URL DeviceMapClient client =

DeviceMapFactory.getClient(LoaderOption.URL,

"http://devicemap-vm.apache.org/data/latest");

New Java Client (2)

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Get the client using JAR data source DeviceMapClient client =

DeviceMapFactory.getClient(LoaderOption.JAR);

Get client using data from file system DeviceMapClient client =

DeviceMapFactory.getClient(LoaderOption.FOLDER,

"/some/path/devicemap/latest/devicedata");

The last option is closest to the W3C DDR client.

DEMO

Outlook

• As of November 2014 after releasing W3C DDR

compliant device data and

new clients beyond W3C for Java, .NET or

JavaScript, DeviceMap is ready to graduate from

the Apache Incubator.

• You should find it soon under:

http://devicemap.apache.org

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Conclusion

• Open, free, based on W3C standard. Update to DDR

by the community and device manufacturers.

• Identification is not only for the device as a single entity

but extended to the web browser

and the operating system. DeviceMap can identify third

parties web browsers and customized operating

systems. A developer can specify the vocabulary and

the aspects of the property he wants to know.

• Easy migration: Device Repository an some DeviceMap

APIs are compatible with W3C DDR

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Conclusion (2)

• Based on identification threshold. When a particular

browser version is not recognized, DeviceMap returns

properties of the nearest version, if this satisfies the

defined threshold.

• Developers can choose which properties to be loaded in

memory by specifying a limited vocabulary

→ No Waste of Memory.

• Patch Support: if you want to change or update your

repository you can do that.

It is simple to add new properties updating your DDR

and your vocabulary.

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Links

• Apache DeviceMap Incubator Site:

http://incubator.apache.org/devicemap/

• DeviceMap Sources and Data:

http://incubator.apache.org/devicemap/source.html

• Mailing Lists:

http://incubator.apache.org/devicemap/mailing-lists.html

• BrowserMap GitHub Mirror:

https://github.com/apache/devicemap-browsermap

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Links (2)

• Apache Sling DeviceMap Demo on GitHub:

https://github.com/raducotescu/devicemap-demo

• Wikimedia LogCapture

https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-

DeviceMapLogCapture

• Miri DDR:

www.ducis.net/Miri/Ddr

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Twitter @wernerkeil

Email wkeil@apache.org